HispanicVista Columnists
Mexican, Know Thyself
-
By
Raoul Lowery Contreras/HispanicVista.com - November 24, 2006
Mexican, Know
Thyself
By Raoul Lowery Contreras
The news from the election came across as HISPANICS turned on
Republicans and may have given Democrats 70 percent of their vote. That
assessment is wrong because while it is convenient for lazy people to use
HISPANIC or LATINO, the terms are meaningless in a political context. For
example, as President Bush received somewhere between 40 and 44 percent of
the “Hispanic” vote in 2004, was it in New York or New Jersey that he
reached such heights? No. New York and New Jersey “Hispanics” are Puerto
Ricans and Dominicans and they vote almost 100 percent Democratic.
In New Mexico, almost all “Hispanics” or “Latinos” are of Mexican
backgrounds. There aren’t enough Puerto Ricans or Dominicans to count. The
same holds true for Texas, California, Arizona, Colorado, Arkansas, North
Carolina, Illinois, Nebraska, Georgia and Iowa, states where the
Spanish-speaking populations are mushrooming.
New Mexico, with a heavy dose of Mexican American votes for President Bush,
voted for President Bush in 2004 in contrast to 2000 when he lost the state
because he didn’t get enough Mexican American votes. Texas Mexicans voted in
huge percentages for Bush when he ran for Governor and approached 50 percent
vote support in both his presidential runs.
Even in Katrina-ravaged New Orleans so many Mexicans are moving in to
rebuild that devastated city that the Black mayor of that city is whining
about NAWLEENS becoming a brown rather than black city. Can any Puerto Rican
or Dominican be found rebuilding the Crescent City?
The New Orleans example is the only one found in the media that completely
labels those involved as Mexican. Even the stupid Mayor of New Orleans
recognizes while he complains about them that they are Mexicans.
First, let’s jettison the HISPANIC LATINO thing. These words have limited
value. Most “Hispanics” or “Latinos” in the country are of Mexican origin,
period, end of discussion. This writer has written thousands of words to
that effect for almost two decades. The media’s lazy editors who are full of
themselves and their total ignorance of real life have ignored my efforts.
I’ll let others discuss the Caribbean Hispanic Latinos, I’ll concentrate on
the 80 percent plus portion of the “Hispanic Latino” community who are
either born in Mexico or are descendent from others born in Mexico.
The Mexican American is more complicated than a pure Mexican is. The Mexican
is more complicated than his Amerindian and European ancestors. They have
produced a country and a people that have advanced farther socially and
economically than the world ever envisioned when the adventurers, thugs,
criminals and visionaries under the command of a roguish Hernando Cortes
landed in Mexico in 1519.
While technology in the form of guns and in transport, ships and horses,
that is, were instrumental in the Spanish conquest of Mexico, guts, bravado
and a profound courage among Cortes and his men conquered Mexico and its
millions. Does the phrase “Burn your ships” ring a bell?
The Spanish came searching for wealth and conquest, bringing with them
priests to save the souls of the millions of natives they found. Their
technology overwhelmed the Amerindian; their religion rescued hundreds of
thousands of men and women from having their hearts carved out by blood lust
priests seeking to satisfy ugly gods created over the eons by priestly
classes who ran entire empires. Certainly, technology aside, 200 Spaniards
could have never conquered millions like they did alone, they needed help
from other Indians disgusted with “religious” human sacrifice and terrible
religions based on mean and nasty “gods.”
And also certainly, if the Indian religions hadn’t been a mile wide and an
inch deep intellectually and socially a new peaceful religion based on Mary
and her Child did not have to be forced on a people sick of human sacrifice.
Of course, Spanish muskets backed up the priests and the Church.
The Spanish were totally brutal in suppressing the Indian. They made them
serfs in their own land by implementing laws that bound Indians to the land
and then gave the land to Spanish settlers who came from Spain to rule with
iron fists, not with religious compassion. He who owned the land owned the
Indians. Indian villages were forced to pay tribute to the Spanish crown;
Indians were forced to work mines and fields, they were forced to live in
total degradation. The entire governance of the Indians was based on race.
The Spanish had 32 racial definitions and the Indian was at the very bottom
and the white Spanish born Spaniard at the top.
In New Mexico, Spanish soldiers cut the feet off of Indian men so they
couldn’t fight back. In the darkest days of war with Protestant England, the
Spanish never committed such atrocities. Against Indians, however, these
weren’t even considered atrocities. After all, they were Indians.
Spanish men, lacking Spanish women joined with Indian women and diversified
their own long-term racial purity with the children who these Indian women
bore, the half-breeds as they were called in the United States. A more
polite word was applied to these children, mestizo.
Contreras' books, THE ILLEGAL ALIEN: A DAGGER INTO THE HEART OF AMERICA and A HISPANIC VIEW OF AMERICAN POLITICS AND THE POLITICS OF IMMIGRATION are available at www.amazon.com and www.barnesandnoble.com